PYJAMAS!!!! NOOOOOOOO!

[sparkindarkness]

Ok, so  apparently a school has decided to chastise parents for going on the school run delivering or picking up their kids dressed in pyjamas. This follows a Tescos’ shop in Cardiff banning customers for also wearing pyjamas

My initial reaction is “do people do this?” I mean I just can’t picture running around outside in my nightclothes (ok, probably because I don’t WEAR nightclothes so it’d be less an issue of going out in pyjamas and more an issue of going out stark naked and likely getting frostbite). The only time I can picture walking around outside my own home in nightwear is if, say, the fire alarm has gone off. So I have a faint boggle that pyjama clad masses are wandering around our streets.

But my second and more important reaction is – why do people care? I mean, so long as the pyjamas cover all the parts that are legally required to be covered*** then why do they care what their shoppers are wearing? And certainly what do they care what people coming to pick up their children are wearing? (And really, how does the school intend to enforce this, I wonder? I mean a shop can keep people out, but what can you do about parents outside the gate or in cars?)

Oh and in response to “people don’t go to see their solicitor dressed in their pyjamas” I have to say HA! HAHAHAHA! Oh that’s funny! Y’know, pyjamas may be an improvement.

I just boggle really at the amount of time, attention and effort people put into what other people are doing. If it causes no harm, if it doesn’t affect your life why do you care if your shoppers or the parents picking up the kids are dressed in pyjamas, formal business attire or fancy dress? Does it matter? Does it make teaching the children and getting the children out of school any harder? Does it make their money less valuable?

It’s just sad that these people think that it’s their BUSINESS what people around them are wearing. They’re not at work, they’re not in uniform, they’re not breaking any obscenity laws (dubious though they may be), they’re not obliged to be professional (and fail to the teachers comparing the way the teachers are dressed to the way parents picking up their children are dressed), they’re not in a formal or professional setting – so… why do you care? Why is your opinion on their clothing even remotely relevant? What gives you the damned right to comment? I’ll even go so far as to say who do you think you are to police their clothing choices?

I think I am endlessly frustrated by the idea that other people’s lives are our business. That we have a right to demand conformity for… what? Our comfort levels? But why are we made uncomfortable by what someone else is wearing when it doesn’t effect us? Our sense of what’s appropriate? Why does our sense of what’s appropriate overrule their sense of what’s appropriate FOR THEM TO WEAR?

It’s a terrible form of arrogance, methinks.

***Personally I don’t even see the point of having the screaming meemies about people being stark naked. I have never really got why nudity is bad, never understood why a nipple or an arsecrack or a penis or a vagina is going to cause our eyes to explode or something. BUT our silly societies have equated nudity with sex for so long now that walking around naked is almost like involving other people in your sex lives – in fact, flashing is just that. Using non-consenting people in your sexual acts or for sexual titillation by exposing yourself to them. So I’m inclined to think, in a proto, not really explored kind of way – that public nudity laws need to change – but so do our attitudes towards nudity first/as well/alongside of it.